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The 52:52:52 project, launching both on this site and on social media in early 2024 will help you address 52 issues with 52 responses over 52 weeks.

A Mundane Comedy is Dominic Kelleher's new book, which will be published in mid 2024. The introduction is available here and further extracts will appear on this site and on social media in the coming months.

This site addresses what's changing, in our own lives, in our organisations, and in wider society. You'll learn about key changes across more than 150 areas, ranging from ageing and time, through nature and animals, to kindness and love...and very much else inbetween.

Halcyon's aim is to help you reflect on how you can better deal with related change in your own life.

What's Changing? - Legacy

Legacy

 

Please see below selected recent legacy-related change.

 

See also:

 

August 2022

  • A London museum decided to return 72 items looted by British troops more than a century ago to Nigeria. The antiquities, which include highly prized “Benin bronze” sculptures, were taken from Benin City, located in present-day southern Nigeria, during an 1897 colonial incursion.

 

May 2022

  • Rock art comes in many forms. As documents created by observers of happenings, rock art provides evidence about the past. The galleries of rock art, curated and preserved in rock shelters or across plateaus are therefore also archives. They are collections of records, selectively produced, preserved and maintained. This archive has its own creators, curators and interpreters, playing a role in the keeping of memory for the community. It can be “read” by those who understand such a text. Like a written archive, it reflects the interests and concerns of that community.

 

August 2021

  • Iraq reclaimed 17,000 archeological artifacts held by two American institutions in its biggest ever repatriation effort. War, military occupation, and a power vacuum in Iraq in recent decades led to mass looting and theft at unexcavated sites. Many of the returned artifacts are from the lost ancient city of Irisagrig.

 

September 2020

  • In The Collapse of Legacy Thinking, David Houle argued that legacy thinking delayed the West from seeing how the world would change at the end of the 20th century. After living for almost fifty years in a cold war with the Eastern Bloc, the West turned inward once that war had been won. It didn’t see that a global economy was dead ahead, with all the resulting disruptions in domestic economies as hundreds of millions of new workers/consumers came online. An “us versus them” thinking had so ruled western cultures that the victory of democracy over communism kept the West from realising the new risk from a virulent non-nation state enemy… terrorism. Most people have an organised way of looking at the world. They build this view through experience, reading, or learning from people they respect. Once in the brain, this becomes fixed as one’s ‘valid’ view of the world. In order to see the future, you have to break that view.

 

August 2020

  • How can we be good ancestors? In The Good Ancestor, leading public philosopher Roman Krznaric explores how we can overcome the frenetic short-termism of the modern world by revealing six profound ways in which we can all learn to think long term. Drawing on radical innovations from around the globe, and describing uniquely human talents like 'cathedral thinking' that our expand our time horizons and sharpen our foresight, Krznaric celebrates the time rebels who are reinventing democracy, culture and economics so that we all have the chance to become good ancestors and create a better tomorrow.

 

April 2020

  • According to pattidigh, when we die, we leave behind shadows of ourselves in the form of objects, a kind of luminous debris of things. She asks "What is your luminous debris?"

 

October 2018

  • Writing your own obituary can boost your career, argued Quartz. It enables you to “think backwards” as you chart a path forward.

 

August 2018

  • A Scottish company has been given planning permission to create a memorial garden with no visible grave signs or markers. Loved ones deposit physical mementos or time capsules in the ground, locating precise plots using smart phones, according BBC Scotland.

 

July 2018

  • Ray Bradbury once said we should leave something behind when we die, something we’ve touched so our souls have a place to go. And when others look at that object or maybe a garden we planted or something else we’ve built, our presence can still be felt. The Museum of Your Parents website says that when our parents are gone, it can still be important to have their things: a plate, a chair, a sweater, an old phone....something of them lives on in this stuff.

 

Pre-2018

  • Many individuals are now life-tracking or lifestreaming, ie. trying to record the minutiae of their own lives digitally, partly for posterity, and also to better monitor how they live in the present. 
  • Nothing wrong with that, but it's also worth looking beyond the horizon from time to time. Thinking about how you would like to be remembered can be a catalyst for radical change. It’s said that Alfred Nobel made the decision to establish his famous prize after his brother died and a newspaper, mistakenly believing it was him, published the epitaph: “The Merchant of Death Is Dead.” To Nobel, who made his fortune from the invention of dynamite, the epitaph was a harsh reminder of how he would go down in history. Shortly after this eye-opener, in a bid to rehabilitate his name, he changed his will, donating most of his fortune to the Nobel Foundation. His memory now lives on, not as a merchant of death, but as an advocate of peace and progress.
  • A strong reminder of the power of legacy can be found in Wilton in WIltshire, UK, where there is a moving tribute to the Earl of Pembroke.
  • Though most people would probably wish to start more modestly, one of the most fascinating and universal such statements we've encountered so far comes from the late Robert Muller.
    • Image removed.1. I believe in the absolute sacredness, uniqueness and prodigy of each human life;
    • 2. I believe that humanity on this miraculous, wondrous, lifeteeming planet has a tremendous cosmic destiny to fulfill and that a major transformation is about to take place in our evolution;
    • 3. I believe that unprecedented life fulfillment, consciousness, transcendence, happiness and union with God and the universe are the true objectives of life. I believe that cooperation, commitment to life, altruism, and love are the means to that fulfillment;
    • 4. 1 believe that an unprecedented, all encompassing new evolutionary agenda now faces humanity, namely;
    • a. The harmony between humanity and our planet.
    • b. The harmony and peace of the human family.
    • C. Our harmony with time.
    • d. Our harmony with the heavens.
    • e. Our personal, individual harmony.
    • 5. 1 believe that the main power, inspiration and wish for this transformation rests with each of the 5.5 billion individuals of this planet;
    • 6. 1 believe that humanity must now transcend its magnificent material and scientific achievements into the moral, affective and spiritual fields. The next frontiers of humanity will be the heart and the soul of which an even lesser percentage than that of the brain is being used;
    • 7. 1 believe in humanity's capacity for unparalleled thinking, perception, inspiration, elevation, planning, cooperation and love for the achievement of a major transformation by the year 2000, and the advent of a peaceful, a happy and spiritual third millennium;
    • 8. 1 believe that humanity should hold a worldwide Bimillennium. Celebration of Life in the year 2000.
    • MY COMMITMENTS
    • I commit myself¬
    • 1. To thank God every day for the unbelievable gift of life;
    • 2. To take good care of the miraculous cosmic unit I have been given, physically, mentally, morally and spiritually;
    • 3. To be a peaceful, loving, kind, happy and healthy person all my life;
    • 4. To irradiate my peace, my happiness and my belief in life;
    • 5. To defend the first universal, cosmic law: 'Thou shall not kill, not even in the name of a nation or a faith;
    • 6. To give thanks to God and society for the privilege of life by contributing to a better, more just, kinder, happier and peaceful world;
    • 7. To devote every moment of my life, every thought, every action and every movement of my heart to the transformation of our planet into a true wonder in the universe;
    • 8. To leave behind me children, friends, actions, thoughts and works which will continue to help humanity's further ascent and transformation towards universal, cosmic, divine fulfillment.
    • 9. To spend my spiritual life after death in doing good for my beloved planet Earth.
    • Personal - The Ten Commandments to all Humans
    • 1.    You shall love each other, your planet, your family, the God of the universe, and your own miraculous life with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength.
    • 2.    You shall practice truth, kindness, and tolerance towards each other.
    • 3.    You shall never kill a human brother or sister, not even in the name of a nation.
    • 4.    You shall not produce, trade, wear, or use any arms or instruments of violence.
    • 5.    You shall never be violent, neither physically, verbally nor mentally.
    • 6.    You shall respect the lives, peace, happiness, and uniqueness of all your human brothers and sisters.
    • 7.    You shall cooperate with each other, help each other, inspire each other.
    • 8.    You shall contribute your peace, love, and happiness to the peace, love and happiness of the human family.
    • 9.    You shall live in harmony with yourself, with your family, with nature and your environment, with all humanity, and with the God of the universe.
    • 10.    You shall live a responsible life in accord with the supreme interests of our planet and of the human family.
    •  
    • Organisational - The Ten Commandments to all Groups and Institutions
    •  
    • 1.    You shall practice truth, tolerance, and respect towards each other.
    • 2.    You shall live in unity and diversity, cooperate with each other, and shall not subvert each other.
    • 3.    You shall harmonize your actions and interests with the supreme interests of our planet and of the human family.
    • 4.    You shall not produce, trade, possess, or use any arms.
    • 5.    You shall not practice violence, neither physical, verbal nor mental, and shall resolve your differences peacefully.
    • 6.    You shall never require killing, violence, or unethical behavior from your members.
    • 7.    You shall respect the United Nations Charter and the unanimous rules, recommendations, and codes of conduct and ethics agreed to by humanity universally.
    • 8.    You shall adopt internal laws and rules of ethics in accord with the supreme interests of our planet and of humanity.
    • 9.    You shall protect the sacred rights of the human person, and obey the universal human rights injunctions of the United Nations.
    • 10.    You shall ensure the internal peace, love, and happiness of your members, and live in harmony with our planet, with all humanity and with the God of the universe.

 

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